The past few weeks have been exciting and eventful. I returned home after spending a year abroad studying at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton England. Only to unpack, repack and once again say goodbye to home and move into the dorms at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Oregon.

My first office

As far as life in Oregon goes, I am a huge fan. The beach is a 20-minute walk to the west, a campus full of marine science experts sits to the east and a sand volleyball court is just outside my doorstep. I have met some awesome young scientists that share my passion for the ocean from all corners of the USA and I get to live with three of the friendliest and funniest ones! We have spent the weekend exploring the beach and the cute casual coastal town of Newport, complete with quirky coffee shops, delicious seafood and a picturesque lighthouse.

CBRAT is a program that attempts to define the potential risks climate change poses for marine species living in the Gulf of California up through the Beaufort Sea. The first phase of CBRAT involved cataloging hundreds of marine species, their traits habitats, ranges and taxonomic information. It’s an impressive feat, and some of the data is already available to the public here: http://www.cbrat.org/.

I will be contributing to the second phase of CBRAT that looks at the primary risks climate change poses to ocean creatures through sea level rise, warmer ocean temperatures and ocean acidification.

Sunset over the dunes

My research focus is ocean acidification. Many marine organisms use calcium carbonate to make their shells. As the ocean becomes more acidic calcium carbonate becomes more difficult for calcifying marine organisms like shellfish and plankton to obtain. The good news is some organisms have adaptations that allow them to live in lower pH environments, but the bad news is these adaptations are highly variable and not entirely understood for many species. That’s where I come in; I will be going through the existing literature and identifying characteristics that make ocean acidification a higher or lower risk for a particular organism and developing pH tolerance parameters for different marine taxa.

I am excited for a summer full of long walks on the beach, epic sunsets, improving my sand volleyball game and lots of marine science! Stay posted for updates on my research, adventures and sea creature fun facts.

By definition a Yurt is a portable, round tent covered with skins or felt and used as a dwelling by nomads in the steppes of Central Asia. A little more than a week ago, I had no idea what a yurt was. Now, I comfortably reside in one overlooking the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve (SSNERR) in Charleston, OR. I’ll admit I was skeptical about not having running water at first, but after seeing the view from my front porch and getting to know my roommates, I have no doubt that I’m in store for an amazing summer on the coast.

One of the first things I noticed upon my arrival to Oregon is how nice the people are here. From the labs at Oregon Institute of Marine Biology (OIMB) and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) to gas stations and even the local music store, I have met nothing but genuine and helpful people. If local fishermen are anything like the people I’ve met so far, it’s no wonder that Oregon Sea Grant and other agencies have made so much progress with innovative commercial fisheries management techniques. Collaboration and a positive attitude can go a long way. I am really looking forward to working with the great staff here at SSNERR for the next couple months.

As far as research goes, I am just getting my feet wet. This past week for me has consisted mostly of literature review and data entry, though I did get out on the water twice. My work will primarily consist of long-term biological monitoring of oyster settlement and fish abundance. I will compare my data from this summer to data collected at our sample sites from up to 30 years ago. Therefore, it is important for me to read through these previous publications to enable comparison of the different datasets. Data entry of previous fish seines is important to me as well. When fish are collected in the field, they are recorded in a log. I have been transferring information about each fish over from the log to a database that South Slough scientists will use to assess fish populations and write future grant proposals. I am also learning about the species richness and abundance found in SSNERR as I enter this data. My mentor has also encouraged me to pursue my own independent project to complete in my time here. I will continue learning about the organisms of SSNERR and propose potential project ideas next week.

My backyard for the next couple months… I could get used to this pic.twitter.com/JVF4w95UKk

— Collin Williams (@Capn_Collin) June 18, 2016

Greetings all!

I can’t believe my first year as a graduate student is already done (at least for schoolwork). The last couple of months have been focused on getting methods, materials, and interview guides compiled and out for comments among a great group of fellow graduate students. Although there ended up being a slight re-adjustment to the aim of the study, it now reflects what is needed by the marine resource managers better than the original version.

Additionally, I was in a marine and coastal ecology class which had an awesome fieldtrip to the study site near Boiler Bay on the Oregon Coast. Below is a sampling of the awesome plants, animals, and everything in between we got to find while we were out there.

I was also continuing to share my thesis poster at both the Portland State University Student Research Symposium in early May.

And the Joint Campus Student Symposium, which combines Portland State University, Oregon State University, and University of Oregon. Portland had the honor of hosting this year in late May.

I am heading off to northern Michigan next week to the International Symposium on Society and Resource Management (ISSRM) conference. They are incorporating a tribes component for the first time this year, which fit right into my focus. In addition to attending talks, networking, and showing my poster, there is also a field trip of a (lake) coastal restoration lead by a tribe. The conference itself should be very interesting, and I have never had the chance to set foot in Michigan before. All this to say I’m very excited for the academic and travel opportunity.

Next steps are mostly a full launch of the field studies for thesis work. With the warming days I’m anticipating excellent weather between Portland and the coast. More pictures to follow. Onward to the summer field season!

Sabra

Along with my normal blog post, I would like to re-post an article I was featured in for Oregon Sea Grant’s Confluence newsletter. I think the article gives a great overall perspective on my research and how it applies to coastal communities:

How will climate change impact estuaries?

Small estuaries, like those prevalent in the Pacific Northwest, are strongly coupled to their watersheds, and thus signs of climate change will show up visibly in these ecosystems. What this change will look like, and how it will affect our coastal communities and ecosystems, is the foundation of my research.
The first question that should be asked in a research project, especially one viewed through the lens of Oregon Sea Grant’s mission of connecting research and stakeholders, is simply, “Why does this matter?” For me, the answer is that our coasts will change in response to climate change, and if we can find ways to more accurately predict what those changes might be, we’ll have a better chance of being prepared. Experience has shown me that it’s difficult to gain traction with stakeholders over the problem of climate change because of its nebulous nature. My research attempts to replace this “looming shadow” of a threat with something actionable that can be integrated directly into community planning. In this way, I believe my research and Oregon Sea Grant’s base ethic of public service are aligned, as my work is specifically designed to create usable products for Pacific Northwest communities.
My research uses numerical modeling to examine estuaries in Tillamook and Coos Bays as they change through time, driven by the predicted future climate. The current state of the practice for this type of study is the “bathtub model,” in which one simply raises the water level by the predicted amount of sea-level rise. However, this model ignores other effects of climate change such as precipitation, wind, and wave action, resulting in oversimplified data. My procedure greatly expands this paradigm through something called a continual hydrodynamic model run, which captures all the ways in which climate change might affect an estuary.
My advisor, professor David Hill in Oregon State University’s College of Engineering, and I have attended several stakeholder meetings regarding coastal hazards and local community planning, to present our research and to get feedback as to what products might be most useful. We intend to continue to be a presence at such meetings and to provide a scientific resource to communities interested in learning how climate change might affect them. While we have not “solved” the question of climate change’s effect on small estuaries, we are trying to answer the question, and I hope my research will eventually provide a universally usable tool to help coastal communities and ecosystems build resilience to climate change.
Kai Parker is a doctoral candidate in coastal and ocean engineering in OSU’s College of Engineering. He is a 2015–16 Robert E. Malouf Fellow funded by Oregon Sea Grant.

For the full article check out the following link:

http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/confluence-springsummer-2016

Since I spent last post wandering about in the conceptual mire of wave physics, for this post I’m going to fast forward into the real world. So, let’s talk about what the ocean means to us. If I were to poll the people of Oregon asking what the ocean meant to them, I would undoubtedly get a scattershot of answers. Each of us has an individual relationship with the ocean. As a first example of potential answers, this is my brother Travis who is a fisherman in Newport. For Travis the ocean is his universe. His blood runs on salt water to the point he gets “land sick” because solid ground doesn’t rock back and forth like the boats he spends most his time on. While the ocean is his life, it’s not a tame one. Last visit from Travis unveiled a story about having to hold perfectly straight into 40 ft. storm swell for over 36 hours because turning even slightly would have resulted in capsizing. For a fisherman the ocean can mean the edge of life and death.

On a happier note here is a picture I took of Cape Lookout on a day not spent in front of the computer. If you were to look the other way down the lens of the camera you would see 3 absolutely giddy humans overflowing with awe of just how beautiful the ocean was that day. Surfboards in hand, the ocean meant to us a day of play and recreation. In our poll, some of the people we asked would say just that: the ocean is a well of happiness that makes this life worth living.

A final answer to our poll would come in the form of those who come face to face with an angry ocean. As the following picture shows, occasionally the ocean comes knocking at our door with the results oftentimes being dire. Undoubtedly some of the people in our hypothetical poll would reply that the ocean represents a threat to their homes, livelihoods and communities.

The ocean as a hazard to our coastal communities is what drives me as a PhD student. Currently this interest has taken the form of investigating flooding in
estuaries and how it will change into the future.  I hope that by defining the hazards we face we can successfully build resilience into our communities. If we think of the interaction between
the ocean and us as a balance, with knowledge of the system we can shift that balance towards harmony. Now, moving back to our conceptual poll about the ocean. How as scientists can we determine what people find as the biggest threats from the ocean and how best to help? Answer: same as the poll, we ask the people who live there and are interacting with the ocean on a daily basis. For this reason my project has a large community interaction component where we go to the communities and work with the various stakeholders (community planners, citizens, government officials, etc.) to determine what products and answers we can provide that will help us to exist peacefully with the ocean. Then hopefully one day when we ask people what the ocean means to them, the only response will be a smile and shared memory of our wondrous watery neighbor.